Worth: $10.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn, Danny Ramirez, John C. Reilly, Benny Safdie
Intro:
… a decent showcase for Qualley’s talent, but a film that can only be recommended for Clare Denis completists.
On paper, the romantic thriller Stars at Noon sounds like an enticing proposition, and for good reason. The co-winner of Cannes’ Grand Prix (shared with Lukas Dhont’s Close) has a literary pedigree, boasts an exotic locale, and features a tantalising collaboration between one of this generation’s most promising actors (Margaret Qualley) and an iconoclastic director (Clare Denis). Unfortunately, the resulting film is a misfire that contains limited romance and even fewer thrills.
American ex-pat Trish (Margaret Qualley) finds herself adrift in the steamy streets of Managua, Nicaragua. Her tenuous career as a journalist is thwarted by uninterested international editors and unwilling local sources. With her resources running low (in every sense of the word), she finds herself languishing in bars, surviving off the generosities of local hotels, and fleeting transactional trysts with their guests. When Trish’s latest dalliance turns out to be a well-connected businessman (Joe Alwyn), she sees a way out, but is this enigmatic Englishman really who he claims to be?
Lensing a political thriller through the eyes of a squirrelly outsider can result in gripping cinema (for example Oliver Stone’s Salvador or Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously), but Clare Denis’ film is no search for righteous truth. Instead, it is fixated on the repetitious minutiae of Trish’s self-made situation. We follow Trish as she encounters one stonewalling after another, but with no perceivable higher objective, and a complete obfuscation of her drives and motivations – we simply don’t know what she is searching for. Trish’s lack of purpose, coupled with the plot’s constant impediments, makes her a highly reactive and petulant character. Perhaps that is Denis’ point: Trish is stuck, and we too with her. Unfortunately, the inescapability generates no suspense, just a sense of tedious reiteration.
Curiously, Denis’ adaptation has modernised the source material of Denis Johnson’s 1986 novel The Stars at Noon, but outside of a pandemic setting and a spattering of modern technology, the updating is of little to no consequence – especially considering that contentious President Daniel Ortega remains in power after all these years, but maybe, once again, that’s Denis’ point – Nicaragua, like Trish, is stuck.
Denis’ languid plotting would be much more tolerable if it had a smouldering tension burning under the surface, but the core romance here is a damp squib. The initial standoffishness of Daniel and Trish sparks a frisson of suspense – maybe these two cynical, isolated souls can thaw each other out – but those hopes are soon dashed as the two solely communicate in tin-earned dialogue soaked in exposition. If we learn anything about these characters it’s because they tell us, not because we feel it.
The same can be said for their physical encounters. Erotic thrillers allow the director non-verbal forms of expression (David Cronenberg is an excellent example), and the blocking of sex scenes can speak volumes, but Denis seems uninterested in this approach. The first depictions of Trish’s sensuality are transactional, and border on the debased, but as the romantic circumstances change; the film’s blocking and framing of sex never really does, so we feel neither carnality or tenderness despite the high ratio of onscreen fornication – and no associated sense of growth, connection or empowerment for the characters.
Through her work in HBO’s The Leftovers and Netflix’s Maid, Margaret Qualley has established herself as a serious talent, and though Stars at Noon gives her little to work with, she remains an engaging presence and is the film’s sole saving grace. Joe Alwyn (a last-minute replacement for Robert Pattinson) is serviceable as Daniel, but one can’t help but wonder what a wildcard element the chameleon-like Pattinson would have brought to proceedings. The supporting cast is notable for having brief (and bizarrely humorous) appearances by John C. Reilly and Benny Safdie, – both giving line readings more suited to an Adam McKay film.
Stars at Noon is a decent showcase for Qualley’s talent, but a film that can only be recommended for Clare Denis completists.
